


the folklore album

by maximoffs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Folklore, M/M, Post-Endgame, because that's life baby, sometimes also just angst with an ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25522024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximoffs/pseuds/maximoffs
Summary: 16 short and sweet fics, track by track, to taylor swift's folklore.steve and bucky, thor and loki. featuring endgame fix-its, a genderbent human/ghost au, chasing the assassin you love all around town, feelings of guilt and reconciliation, themes of home and homecoming, talking to the dead, and much, much more.tags will be updated as i update.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	1. if my wishes came true, it would’ve been you (steve/bucky)

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of a dreamy, hazy post-endgame sort of fix-it for steve and bucky after track 1: "the 1." 
> 
> notable lines: "but we were something don’t you think so?" and "roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool" and "and if my wishes came true, it would have been you."

After the wars are over, Bucky starts a garden. 

All of the wars. There’s the one he signs up for— that one he dies in. There’s the one he is remade for— that one he dies in. There’s the one that comes from space— and that one he dies in. Bucky is like a cat, and when his oldest friend and lifeline looks him in the eyes and tells him he is going back to replace the stones that were borrowed Bucky loses another six of his lives. 

So. With the one he has left, Bucky starts a garden. He plants the sweetest summer flowers. He plants fat hydrangeas and lavender; he plants poppies, lilies, and chrysanthemums of every color. Because he’s never gardened before, he doesn’t know what will grow and what will die in the summer heat. These days, he plays everything by ear. He takes some chances. 

With his fists in the earth, he catches a memory and like all memories it’s of him and Steve. Sarah is still alive in this one, and they buy weak little plants to put on her fire escape.

“You think this’ll live?” Steve asks, shoving a withered-looking weed in Bucky’s face. He has that look on him, half-exhausted and half-determined, and there’s a smear of dirt across the bridge of his nose. It’s delightful. 

“It’ll live,” Bucky says, with unfounded confidence. “It just needs sun. And water.” He pauses. “And love.”

“I don’t have time to love a plant, Barnes. I have big plans.”

“What, you mean like, breaking your wrist for the third time this year?”

“Shut up,” Steve huffs, his cheeks turning red. “Neither of those times were my fault. And no— like taking an art class at the community college.”

“With what money?”

Steve puts the pot down, but doesn’t look back up. He pokes at the wet dirt around it instead, distractedly. “I thought I’d just sneak in the back. I’m small enough— if someone tall sits in front of me, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” Steve looks up now, his expression a pitcher winding. “Why shouldn’t I have a chance, just because we don’t have any money?” 

“It’s a Depression, babe.”

“ _You’re_ a Depression,” Steve grumbles. 

Bucky laughs at that, loudly, his head thrown back. He pulls Steve toward him and right there, outside in the middle of the afternoon, kisses him softly on the mouth. It’s one of the only times. After the wars, in the garden he has made for himself, Bucky remembers and wishes it hadn’t been. 

Sometimes he walks around the city. His apartment is cozy, and much bigger than the one his family lived in growing up, but he still gets stir-crazy. He’s still learning about freedom in the 21st century: street performers and the Sunday matinee and how many flavors of ice cream there are. He’s been made and unmade and he has discovered the pure, unfiltered joy of browsing through the Barnes & Noble on Union Square for hours after therapy, after opening up his chest cavity and digging around for clues and stitches. Bucky has a glass of wine in a bistro on the corner of Prince Street. 

He remembers Steve, 1937. They’re walking on cobblestones, drunk on cheap whiskey and each other’s laugh lines. It starts to rain— really just pour— and they’re both soaked through, and Bucky thinks of pneumonia and hospital beds, but Steve just laughs and laughs and laughs. He puts his arms out and does a pirouette and he is so tiny and he is so thin and he looks like a prince anyway. They kiss against the brick of every other building on their way home. Steve is the light glinting off the stones. He’s the light Bucky never turns off, ever. 

His therapist is an older woman with kind eyes. She asks him, “What would you have wanted to do differently?”

Bucky says: “Everything.”

On the way home he buys flowers for the kitchen counter. Buttercups. The light from those, too, is Steve. 

There are nights he makes up his own memories. Things that never happened; things that should have happened. Steve in that art class, sketching cities and rivers. Steve coming home, painting Bucky nude. These keep the bad memories at bay, the ones Bucky only feels comfortably revisiting in the presence of his therapist. She says it’s alright, as long as they revisit them eventually. She says the best way to move on is to look the thing that killed you in the eye. 

These, then, take them through time. 

It’s the end of the 40’s and they’re coming home together. Bruised, hollowed out. They stay in touch with the friends that make it out alive, and they tell them their secret because the war makes brothers out of them all. In his dreams at night Bucky is a sniper again and his hands are red. When he wakes Steve is pressing his mouth against his neck and saying _we’re home now sweetheart, I’ve got you, I love you, I’ve got you_. And he does. God, he does. 

It’s the 1950’s and when Bobby Freeman releases _Do You Wanna Dance_ , they dance. When a stray cat follows Bucky home from the grocery store, they take it in and name it Benjamin on a whim. (“What kind of a name is _Benjamin_?” Steve says, later. “You know, like Benjamin Franklin.” “Oh,” Steve says. “He was a Freemason,” Steve says. As if this has any bearing on their scrappy new friend. Bucky kisses him and kisses him.)

It’s the 1960’s, the 1970’s, the 1980’s. They grow old together. It’s 2025 and his therapist’s room is painted a soft, neutral green and there’s art of ships on the walls. They blur now, as he says this out loud. “We were supposed to grow old together.”

She nods, as sympathetic as possible, and leans in toward him. They are on opposite sides of the room, of the world, but it’s too close anyway and Bucky feels her presence suffocating him. He feels the weight of the waves in the paintings; they drag him toward another plane when all he wants is to be back there on that fire escape all those decades ago. He wants to wipe the dirt from Steve’s nose and kiss him while the neighbors hang their laundry out to dry. He wants not to care. He wants so badly to be able to tell himself not to care, because it will not matter, because it will all be taken from him no matter how many pennies he tosses, no matter how many wishes he makes. 

“We were something,” Bucky says, wiping his face with his sleeve. He is quieter now than he was before, six lives ago. It takes longer for him to smile. 

“You’re still something,” his therapist says, and offers him the box of tissues. 

“Well,” Bucky laughs a watery laugh. “You know I never leave well enough alone.” 

He leaves the pretend memories in her office, and he promises only to visit them when he can’t sleep at night. He needs them more in the years between. He needs them most in the days and months after Steve leaves; when he dreams the blood is not just on his hands but also in his mouth and on the sheets. The blood is everywhere Steve has been; it covers kisses and bite marks. 

Roses, this time, on his way home. White ones for beside the bed. 

Bucky, with his one life left. He walks by the fountain in Washington Square Park and when he tosses a penny into it instead of making a wish he says a little prayer of gratitude. No one can accuse him of not trying. Of not improving. There has been improvement. _Still something_ , he thinks. 

When he opens the door to his apartment Steve is curled up on the sofa chair; he’s doing the _Times_ crossword. Steve looks up at him. He sees the flowers. He smiles. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” Steve says, quietly, because he knows therapy days take their toll. 

“Hi,” Bucky says. 

“How was— ”

“None of my wishes came true,” Bucky says, and struggles to follow up with an explanation. It isn’t entirely true, and it isn’t entirely false. Many of them didn’t. Many of them didn’t in the way he idealized. 

Steve glides over to him. He’s older now, but not by much, and not as visibly as he would be if it had not been for the serum. There are streaks of grey in his hair and in his beard, soft lines around his eyes. He is still the most beautiful thing Bucky has ever seen. Like a prince. 

“I know,” Steve says. 

“But we were something,” Bucky says, trying not to think of all the lives and years lost. Trying not to think of all the absence and death between them. 

Steve nods. He takes Bucky’s hand and he kisses it. 

“We still are,” he says. 

Sometimes, at night, Bucky looks at him. He tries to imagine away the in-between years— the years after the Thanos era is over for good; Captain America’s face plastered on billboards and bus stops. Inside the pages of magazines, but gone too, corporeally vacant. The man out of time, trapped back in time, doing a thankless task. Coming back to him, eventually. Bucky thinks of Steve’s sacrifice and exhaustion and cannot begrudge the man he loves his selflessness although in the darkest parts of his heart he sometimes wishes Steve had chosen Bucky over the rest of the world, first. Knows that if he had, he would not have been the man Bucky had fallen in love with, almost a century ago. 

Loves him despite the in-between years. Loves him because of the in-between years. Loves him in their together-reality, and in the reality that could have been. Loves him. 


	2. i knew everything when i was young (steve/bucky)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> flashbacks to the good and the bad. 
> 
> notable lines: "i knew you, your heartbeat on the high line, once in twenty lifetimes" and "i knew you'd come back to me"

1

Steve is 72 with his grandson at his heels. A little boy they name James, after his father’s middle name. After Steve’s insistence. In the attic sunbeams fall down all around them— a mid-autumn day— like lights through a prism. James is 8 and missing teeth; he talks with a lisp that Steve can’t get enough of. His whole heart. They hunt through the old toys together; they find music boxes and plastic submarines, raggedy dolls with discolored hair, a well-loved bear missing one button eye. The house is ancient, but it’s still good. Steve has to stoop to keep from hitting the ceiling.

Under a plaid throw blanket they uncover a box with the initials J.B.B. The tape curls off; the flaps lift up. James, a neat and introspective boy, begins to carefully rummage through its contents, and pulls out something battered, woolen. Three polaroids drop out of it.

“Grandpa,” he says. “Look.”

Steve looks.

James’ face is small and serious when he passes over the photographs. The first one is of Bucky and Sarah; they’re dancing in the light in the kitchen. Bucky spins her around as she beams, open and unfiltered: her most beautiful self. The second is of Bucky and Steve, arm-in-arm, the remnants of a joke on both of their faces. Steve remembers this secret power he used to have; it was making Bucky laugh. He remembers the thrill of it. The last one is of Bucky alone, standing in their shared room. He’s sly-eyed, an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and suddenly—   
  


2

Steve is 25 with his shirt half-buttoned, watching the way Bucky’s hands grip a bottle of beer. He doesn’t smoke often; he doesn’t like doing it around Steve, who he worries about even when there’s nothing wrong. He’s dancing around to a Sammy Davis Jr. song and Steve is so struck by how beautiful he is he feels the sudden need to sit down, right on the floor, right where he’s standing. 

Instead he says, “Can you stop moving around for one second?” with the camera aimed.

“Mm,” Bucky says, shaking his head. Shaking his ass. “No.”

“Just really quick!”

“Dance with me first.”

“Buck, come on.” But he’s grinning. But he’s setting the camera down. But he’s taking Bucky’s outstretched hand and folding into his arms like he belongs there, the scent of Bucky’s unlit cigarette like ghost smoke coiling all around them. 

Bucky presses his forehead against Steve’s and Steve kisses him without warning. 

“Let’s stay in,” Bucky says, after the song is over.

“No,” Steve says, finally getting his shot. “Let’s go out.” 

Of course, they do. They do and it’s perfect: it’s getting handsy in the back of a badly lit bar; it’s the smoke on both of their tongues and then only the taste of one another; it’s too much liquor and dancing under the streetlights on the way home. There is no resisting Steve in those days, and he uses it to his advantage, wraps Bucky up around him like a beautiful pet snake. 

Knows Bucky would die for him if he asked him to. Knows Steve would die for Bucky, too. Knows it until it isn’t true anymore.   
  


3

Steve is 40 with his knuckles bloodied from spending long nights at Murdock’s boxing gym. When he comes home, they fight with words. He’s never around anymore, he doesn’t pay enough attention. He forgets the important dates. Steve does not know how to explain that every date has been important, that he can’t differentiate between the special occasions and the mediocre moments. Mediocrity does not exist to him with Bucky in his bed, with Bucky all wrapped around him like a life jacket. He doesn’t say these things, although he knows that he should. After a while, he doesn’t say anything, and they go to sleep at different hours.  
  


4

Steve is 72 with his grandson sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor beside him. James presents him with the woolen thing next, and Steve knows what it is without having to think twice. A cardigan, battered, patched up one too many times. Under the scent of time and storage is the scent, somehow, of Bucky. 

“Where did this come from?” James asks, already wise beyond his years. 

“It belonged to an old friend,” Steve says, and—

  
5

Steve is 22 with the rain pouring down, soaked to the bone, car broken down on the side of the road and a storm so loud it feels godlike, treacherous. “Shit,” he says, over and over again. “Shit.” Bucky leaning over the hood, something smoking from inside. 

“Shit,” Steve says.

“That’s not helping!” Bucky says, but there’s a smile in his voice somehow; he looks beautiful somehow, hair plastered against his forehead.

“I know,” Steve mumbles. He hugs himself tightly, freezing and adamant not to admit it. 

“Go back inside. I’ll figure this out.”

“I’m helping.”

“No,” Bucky says, looking fully at him now, grinning in the dark. “You’re not helping at all.”

“I could be helping,” Steve says, grumpily, “if you didn’t take up all the front car area space.”

“The what? Say that again?”

“I’m not leaving you out here to freeze to death.”

“Who’s gonna make my funeral arrangements if we both freeze to death?”

“Don’t joke,” Steve says. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” Bucky says, seriously. “You’re the only person I trust to make sure they play Madonna at the wake.”

“I hate you.” 

“You don’t,” Bucky says. Because he doesn’t. He never could. 

They end up calling AAA and huddling in the front together. Bucky pulls a cardigan from the backseat and strips Steve’s shirt off of him. He bundles him up like a burrito and kisses his nose. 

“What about you?”

“I’ll live.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Of course.”

“Because if you’re lying, we’re not having Madonna at your funeral.” 

“Wow,” Bucky says, settling back into his seat. “You’re really serious about this.”

“Dead serious.”

They kiss until they’re rescued. Bucky keeps his word, and doesn’t die. Steve keeps the cardigan.   
  


6

Steve is 42 with the love of his life calling it quits.

It doesn’t feel real, even with Bucky's silhouette out the window of the last train out of Grand Central Station. Even with his arms around himself, feeling like a kid again, hanging back. It feels less real than the polaroid Steve keeps in his wallet, the unlit cigarette, the night ahead of them. It feels less real than the box of Bucky’s old clothes crammed under their bed. Less real than the ghosts of kisses past, wine-stained and haunted, all over Steve’s hands and face. They don’t get along anymore. They don’t fit the same way anymore. Steve wants to say, there is no other place on earth for me to fit if not in your arms.

Steve wants to say, there is no other place on earth for me to fit. 

On the subway home, he deliberately misses his stop. He rides all the way to Coney Island, although there’s no magic in it anymore, and the paint’s all chipping. Steve stands on the beach and remembers every time Bucky said I love you first. Every time Bucky said “I love you” first and every time Bucky said “I love you first.”  
  


7

Steve is 73 with his family cracking jokes in the kitchen. They don’t get together as much as they used to; they all have separate lives and families now, spread out across the states like an open hand. The holidays are still sacred. Steve glances over at James who is sitting on the counter with him, licking frosting off of a spoon, and knows it to be true.

When the doorbell rings, they are halfway through dinner and snow has begun to fall. Everyone stands at once but Steve raises a hand, says “I’ve got it,” says “don’t stop eating on account of me.” But they all do. Even now, his kids worship him like a hero, trying to rub the weariness out of his eyes with their stories and loud laughter. Steve, who once thought he didn’t have any love left in his heart to give, with four children and two grandchildren. With more on the way. With a life lived fully, lovingly and whole. 

Steve opens the door and he’s standing there, looking anxious under the light of the front porch. Snowflakes land and disappear in his scarf, at his collar. In his hair. Steve knows him despite the years; Steve would know him anywhere. Across a crowded terminal, in the gift shop of a museum. His smile like a song. 

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hi,” Steve says back. 

“I shouldn’t have come,” Bucky says, immediately, registering the joy coming from inside. Registering having interrupted something. 

“No,” Steve says. He opens the door wider. “I knew you'd come back to me.”


End file.
